Quick Tip: Send Photos from Your Camera to Photo Stream

By Will Smithon Feb. 19, 2013 at 1:14 p.m.

I'm addicted to iCloud's Photo Stream--shooting an image on my iPhone, then being able to view it on my Mac, PC, iPad, or Apple TV is great. Here's how to bring the same always-synced functionality to your DSLR or mirrorless camera.

I love shooting photos with my Sony NEX--it’s much more flexible and produces higher-quality photos than my phone camera. But, when I shoot with it, I miss having photos instantly accessible on all my devices using Apple’s Photo Stream syncing service. Luckily, I was able to figure out how to use an Eye-Fi wireless SD card and a PC or Mac in my home to sync shots taken on my real camera to Photo Stream. My trick only works when I’m connected to my home Wi-Fi network, but the Eye-Fi will save my photos when I’m away, and upload anything I shoot when I’m out as soon as I get back home.

To connect Photo Stream to a regular digital camera, you’ll need an always-on computer running Windows or OSX, and a camera that includes an SD card slot.The Mac procedure varies depending on the software you use to sync Photo Stream photos to your Mac. Eye-Fi has good how-tos for syncing photos to iPhoto and Aperture. Once they're in your imaging app of choice, make sure the “Automatic Upload” option is checked in app's Photo Stream preferences and you should be good to go.

On Windows, getting photos to Photo Stream was as easy as installing iCloud and telling the Eye-Fi's software to automatically save images from your camera to the Photo Stream Uploads folder--typically in c:/Users/